This volume brings together scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, business, and law to reimagine the nuances of regional interconnectivity in Asia and to challenge notions of boundaries and boundedness in reconceptualizing the field of Asian studies. Focusing on connections that animate Asian regionalism and the academic study of Asia, these chapters operate in three overlapping interdisciplinary areas: the construction of cultural positionality in literature, musical performance, and narratives of self-discovery; the interdependence of governance, policy, and legislation in national, bilateral, and multilateral politics; and the enmeshment of regionalized political economies—through ties of cooperation and competition, productivity and extraction, exploitation and investment—amid increasingly decentralized global power. These contributions foreground analyses of cultural production, economic flows, and social mobility that cut across South and Southeast Asia and extend toward East and West Asia to form new networks of regional interconnection. Pushing against the rigid boundaries of nationalized identities, state institutions, internationalized development schemes, and government-sanctioned trade policies, these essays reexamine the diverse dimensions of intra-Asian regionalism and its robustness as an approach to scholarly inquiry.
